The New York City Council is voting on a resolution this morning supporting the idea that Internet service providers cannot discriminate against web traffic on their networks. As gestures go, this resolution supporting net neutrality is more symbolic than it is useful, and to that end has already yielded a couple of photos of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg shaking hands and looking concerned about the future of NYC broadband.

However, New York City is a nice case study for competitive broadband, so I hope Genachowski took notes while he was there. Verizon,  Time Warner Cable and  Cablevision all serve the city (although they don’t all compete head to head in every block), so some residents there have access to both fiber to the home and cable’s wideband service using DOCSIS 3.0. Our own Ryan Lawler, who lives in Harlem, is paying $33 a month for Internet service from Time Warner Cable, which currently has the monopoly in his building. However, he says he just got a note informing him that Verizon FiOS will also soon be available, so we’ll see what happens to his cable speeds (which are currently 9 Mbps down and 500 kilobits per second up) and service in the next few months.

The state’s CIOwants to collect real data on broadband penetration and speeds so that it can get a sense of customers’ level of satisfaction with their service as opposed to just knowing which areas have broadband and which don’t. A Congressman from the state is also attempting to pass legislation that would give the FCC the power to regulate certain aspects of net neutrality and broadband access. So given the competition, better data collection and consumer-friendly legislative efforts, I hope Genachowski is doing some learning, not just politicking for a symbolic victory on net neutrality.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

Living by the Numbers: What Happens When You Quantify Everything? WebWorkerDaily – by Celine Roque "; Wireless Handheld Keyboard and Trackpad for UMPCs jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; The Party Line — Phone Buzz of the Day jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel ";

Posted by Stacey Higginbotham on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  3 Comments
Tags: Cablevision, CVS, Time Warner Cable, TWC, Verizon, VZ

Even though we’re inching ever-closer towards consumption-based broadband, not all ISPs are implementing metered or tiered plans as a way to punish users who clog their pipes. For example, Verizon plans to may one day move to a consumption-based model as a way to generate additional revenue, not because of any network constraint. Brian Whitton, executive director of access technologies at Verizon, spoke with me earlier this week about that company’s fiber network — and why he believes every other ISP is going to have to embrace a fiber to-the-home strategy, too:

• Personalized Video: As video moves from broadcast to a time- and place-shifted model that lets consumers watch what they want, when they want, sending televisions shows out on demand in a unicast model will overwhelm cable networks.
• 3-D TV: Depending on the technology consumers adopt (GigaOM Pro, subscription required), sending 3-D video content for games and television could consume up to 1.8 times a normal video stream for autostereoscopic delivery, while true holographic TV, which is the eventual goal, would require 100 Mbps per channel.
• Upstream Video: “I think in this whole marketplace of video that oligopoly [of content creation] is deteriorating and HD camcorders and codec tools will lead to different TV programming coming from the masses,” Whitton said. Thanks to YouTube, anyone can create their own content and send it up, so personalized channels are not unrealistic. Whitton said the result will be a burden on the uplink that cable companies can’t current handle.

Despite the trash talk directed at cable companies by Whitton, the companies with the most to fear right now are those relying on copper networks such as Qwest and AT&T, both of which have put their money behind a fiber-to-the-node strategy, which takes fiber out to the existing node and then relies on existing copper wire to get to the home. The cable providers are able to bundle their channels together to provide faster up and downstream access using DOCSIS 3.0, but extracting more performance and speeds from copper is difficult.

That’s not stopping the telcos with copper still in the ground, which is why ASSIA received $10 million in funding recently for its software that helps tweak DSL networks, and why folks are still funneling money into research that boosts copper performance. At some point the telcos are going to have to take a hard look at their aging infrastructure and decide how much longer they should poor money into copper, much like you or I might do when evaluating whether or not to fix or junk a 12-year-old car. In the meantime, I have to agree with Whitton — eventually everyone will need a fiber to their home.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

Living by the Numbers: What Happens When You Quantify Everything? WebWorkerDaily – by Celine Roque "; Wireless Handheld Keyboard and Trackpad for UMPCs jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; The Party Line — Phone Buzz of the Day jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel ";

Posted by Stacey Higginbotham on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  6 Comments
Tags: AT&T, T, Verizon

The Asia-Pacific region is getting ever-closer to faster mobile broadband, with network operators in Japan, Singapore, Australia and Indonesia readying their Long Term Evolution networks. Today NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s largest mobile operator, affirmed its plans to deploy LTE in 2010; it also said it would shut off its 2G network in March 2011 since most subscribers now have 3G phones. NTT DoCoMo had previously said it would keep the 2G network running until December 2012. Speaking at the GSM Association’s Mobile Asia Congress 2009, Ryuji Yamada, president and CEO of NTT DoCoMo, said LTE data cards will be ready in 2010 and handsets will be ready in 2011.

Singapore Telecommunications, the largest carrier in Singapore with operations in Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines, also disclosed plans for LTE trials. SingTel has chosen Alcatel-Lucent as its equipment vendor for the trials, which will begin in the first half of 2010 and take anywhere from six to nine months. The network operator hopes the trial will help it and its regional associates and joint ventures better understand LTE and determine the best approach and strategy for its adoption in their respective local markets. Meanwhile, here in the U.S., we await Verizon’s and MetroPCS’ 2010 deployments, with netbooks and smartphones in hand.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

Living by the Numbers: What Happens When You Quantify Everything? WebWorkerDaily – by Celine Roque "; Wireless Handheld Keyboard and Trackpad for UMPCs jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; The Party Line — Phone Buzz of the Day jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel ";

Posted by Stacey Higginbotham on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  0 Comments
Tags: LTE, MetroPCS, NTT DoCoMo, PCS, SingTel, Verizon, VZ

Get ready for the next generation of fiber to the home, which will deliver 10 Gbps downlink and 2.5 Gbps uplink shared across 32 homes. Verizon will announce next year that it has achieved these results in its labs, a huge improvement over the 2.5 Gbps down and 1.2 Gbps up the company is currently deploying. But get ready to dig deeper into your wallet, too, because even if the demand for broadband isn’t breaking the Internet, it’s surely forcing ISPs to rethink how they charge for such a valuable service — even Verizon.

While many ISPs are implementing caps or tiers because they have real resource constraints at points in their network – Comcast’s 250 GB-per-month cap, for example, is aimed at stopping folks from unduly clogging its shared, last-mile networks — some are eying such measures as a source of additional revenue and a way to fend off potential competition from online video. The best example of this is Time Warner Cable’s tiered broadband plan, which caused such consumer ire that the company ended up backing down from it. However, when Verizon’s CTO Dick Lynch said in September that Verizon was also in favor of some kind of consumption-based billing, it was kind of like watching your favorite indie rocker sell out. Why would Verizon, which is building out a fiber-to-the-home network, plan to eventually move to some sort of consumption model?

The answer is because it can. I spoke with Brian Whitton, executive director of access technologies at Verizon, about the FiOS network in an effort to get some clarity regarding the rumor that even it would eventually face constraints under the onslaught of video. Whitton quickly disabused me of that notion, pointing out that the network is built to be upgradeable for decades to come by replacing electronics at the ends of the pipe. He basically told me that Verizon didn’t spend $18 billion (it spent $23 billion in total but some of that would have been spent anyhow) in additional upgrades to its network only to rip it out a few years later, and explained how the fiber stretches from the customer home all the way back to the fiber-based long-haul network.

But he did acknowledge how valuable broadband has become — valuable enough that people will pay for premium access to it, especially those using up a disproportionate amount of network assets. “Ultimately this is the fairest cost recovery model, and with a tiering plan or a meter everyone is paying their fair shares to finance the network,” Whitton said. Unlike other ISPs, Verizon doesn’t view heavy bandwidth users as hogs, but it does view them as potentially high-end customers.

What’s frustrating as a consumer is that because of the fragmented nature of competition in U.S. broadband markets, providers offering these consumption-based plans don’t have real competition to keep prices in check. Most places have two providers that offer slightly different sets of services and plans, making it hard to compare prices. I don’t mind paying more for a better network (I do so for my cell phone), but most consumers don’t have that option when it comes to wired access. While Comcast (which competes against Verizon in about 12 percent of its footprint) is rolling out faster broadband to ensure its customers don’t leave the cable provider for fiber, in other areas of the country, such as here in Austin, Texas, folks get the choice between DSL (with some U-verse) and cable that hasn’t been upgraded to the faster DOCSIS 3.0 speeds. So while Verizon’s FiOS will deliver faster service to customers, as it implements consumption-based billing of some sort, there’s no real competition to keep its pricing in check for those who have a need for speed. And eventually, we’ll all have that need.

This article also appeared on BusinessWeek.com.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

Living by the Numbers: What Happens When You Quantify Everything? WebWorkerDaily – by Celine Roque "; Wireless Handheld Keyboard and Trackpad for UMPCs jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; The Party Line — Phone Buzz of the Day jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel ";

Posted by Stacey Higginbotham on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  23 Comments
Tags: Broadband, Comcast, tiered broadband, Time Warner Cable, Verizon

Motorola and Verizon, thanks to their $100 million marketing efforts, are going to sell some 600,000 Droids during the fourth quarter of 2009, according to Mark McKechnie of Broadpoint AmTech, a boutique research firm. He had initially expected about 200,000 device sales following the launch, but he has upped his forecast: Motorola should sell another 200,000 Droids by Black Friday and 150,000-200,000 during the remainder of the holiday season. This would bring the total to some 600,000 Droids for 2009.

We recently reported the findings of a study from Flurry that indicated Motorola might have sold close to 250,000 Droids in the first week of its availability. McKechnie’s forecast adds credence to Flurry’s findings. McKechnie expects that Motorola will sell about a million Android-based phones during the quarter. That works out to 400,000 CLIQ (also known as Dexter) sales on T-Mobile, Orange, Telefonica and America Movil.

According to Broadpoint AmTech estimates, Motorola should sell about 10 million Android units in 2010 with an average selling price of $286. The company is planning to have about 20 different smartphone models in 2010 and will be selling on most major carriers in the U.S. Each Android unit contributes four times the gross profit of a feature phone unit; those 10 million Android units will contribute nearly half of the gross profits in Motorola’s handset division.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

Living by the Numbers: What Happens When You Quantify Everything? WebWorkerDaily – by Celine Roque "; Wireless Handheld Keyboard and Trackpad for UMPCs jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; The Party Line — Phone Buzz of the Day jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel ";

Posted by Om Malik on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  14 Comments
Tags: droid, iPhone, Motorola, Verizon

If you read the reviews, it becomes obvious that I am part of a small minority of folks who haven’t been blown away by the new Droid, a Google Android OS-based smartphone made by Motorola that Verizon Wireless launched Nov. 5 in the U.S. All the accolades are actually turning into smashing sales for the Droid, according to data collected by Flurry, a San Francisco-based mobile analytics company. How big are the sales? (Find out below the fold.)

We have been following the Droid pretty closely, and once we learned that the device had a solid (if not blockbuster) weekend, we decided to get a better grasp of the Droid-fever that seems to be spreading across the nation. Flurry, which tracks the usage of mobile applications across various platforms, ran a query at our behest to get us a clearer (if not totally accurate) picture of the Droid launch and its market penetration.

Flurry has come up with a stunning number: 250,000 Droids sold in the first week vs. 1.6 million iPhone 3GS devices sold in the first weekend. Apple said it sold over a million devices in the first weekend of the launch of iPhone 3GS, so 1.6 million is pretty close to the mark. There has been talk that nearly 200,000 units of Droid were on the shelves at the time its debut, so it is not far-fetched to peg the total sales for the week at 250,000. (Related post: “iPhone 3GS vs. Droid: How Do They Really Stack Up?”)

Flurry monitors about 10,000 apps across iPhone and Android and claims that it tracks apps on approximately two out of three unique iPhone and Android handsets. To estimate first week sales totals for the myTouch 3G, Droid and iPhone 3GS, Flurry detected new handsets within its system, and then made adjustments to account for varying levels of Flurry application penetration by handset. Flurry additionally cross-checked its estimates against Apple actual sales, released for the iPhone 3GS, which totaled 1 million units sold over the three days of sales, June 19-21. [Flurry statement]

If Flurry results are accurate, then Motorola and Verizon have a winner on their hands. This is the fastest-selling Android device to date. It also helps that Motorola and Verizon have budgeted $100 million to promote it. As the gadget makes it way across the world, one can expect sales of Droid to go higher. Motorola predicts it will sell a million units by the end of 2009. That works to about $100 per customer in acquisition costs for Motorola and Verizon. (Related posts: “What You Need to Know About the Droid” and “What Are the Downsides to Droid?”)

The average Android app session length is about four minutes vs. two minutes for iPhone apps, Flurry found. I believe that is because the Android apps are not as intuitive to use as the iPhone apps, but hey, that’s just me. What do I know — I don’t think Droid is that hot, and it sold a quarter million units in week one.

PS: Check out this great comment from one of our readers, Nicholas. “Currently, we are witnessing the evolution of mobile technologies past the computing paradigm of laptops, desktops and workstations, and Motorola needs a more cohesive idea of what can and will be accomplished in the mobile space,” he writes. Agreed — and that is why I find MotoBlur, the company’s communications-based interface, more interesting than its hardware. It could, with some work, become the new way of consuming large amounts of data.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

Living by the Numbers: What Happens When You Quantify Everything? WebWorkerDaily – by Celine Roque "; Wireless Handheld Keyboard and Trackpad for UMPCs jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; The Party Line — Phone Buzz of the Day jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel ";

Posted by Om Malik on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  58 Comments
Tags: Android, Apple, droid, google, smartphones, Verizon

Verizon may be joining the ranks of Internet service providers that send subscribers who illegally download or upload music files notices on behalf of the Recording Industry of America, according to sources who spoke with CNet. Verizon has not responded to my questions on this issue, but the CNet story says the letters will only notify subscribers that they may have erred; it will not threaten them with disconnection. We covered this trend last March when AT&T began experimenting with these letters:

AT&T reached out today to let me know that it doesn’t issue take-down notices to its subscribers, but merely forwards the notice from the copyright owner along with an AT&T cover letter. The cover letter informs the subscriber without actually accusing them of illegal activity how they might find themselves in the position of receiving such a letter, and reminds them of AT&T’s terms of service that prohibit sharing copyrighted material.

If Verizon does plan to send notices on behalf of the RIAA or other rights organizations, it’s most likely because the ISP wants to get on the good side of content owners that it needs to make deals with in order to offer compelling content via its IPTV and even its broadband products. Is this the beginning of a three-strikes policy, whereby those accused of pirating content may find themselves disconnected, or is this is merely an effort to placate content owners?

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

Living by the Numbers: What Happens When You Quantify Everything? WebWorkerDaily – by Celine Roque "; Wireless Handheld Keyboard and Trackpad for UMPCs jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; The Party Line — Phone Buzz of the Day jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel ";

Posted by Stacey Higginbotham on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  0 Comments
Tags: AT&T, RIAA, T, Verizon, VZ

  Several Internet service providers in the U.S. and around the world (including a large Chinese ISP) are currently implementing P4P technologies on their networks to help alleviate congestion caused by peer-to-peer files, and they will soon be joined by other ISPs doing the same. Indeed, P4P efforts that were showcased in August 2008 are taking on more relevance as broadband demand escalates and the FCC tries to regulate the principles by which carriers can deal with congestion on their networks.

In the August 2008 tests, which were performed by Comcast, Verizon, Yale and Pando Networks, users reported seeing see an 80 percent improvement in speed for P2P files using the technology, while it reduced traffic on the ISP network by 34 percent. That’s nothing to scoff at considering P2P traffic still accounts for 38 percent of global Internet traffic. So after more than a year of relative quiet, I checked in to see where the much-vaunted P4P efforts currently are.

The good news is that P4P is alive and well and several researchers and ISPs are testing its use for P2P downloads such as BitTorrent as well as for P2P streaming, which could help alleviate two of the largest anticipated sources of congestion on the web.  Some popular P2P streaming applications consumers may have encountered are Spotify, the UK music service, and Octoshape, the company that streamed the Obama inauguration and still works with CNN.

The P4P standards-setting process is still underway at the IETF (the topic will be discussed at a meeting in Hiroshima this week) so there’s no official P4P protocol to report on yet, but we’re “halfway through a 2-3-year process,” said Marty Lafferty, the CEO of the Distributed Computing Industry Association, which works with the P4P working group.

The lack of an industry standard isn’t stopping anyone from testing out P4P technology in their own networks, however. Robert Levitan, CEO of Pando Networks, which participated in the August trials, says companies are already coming to Pando to implement P4P-like technologies. One large U.S. and one international ISP are using P4P technology commercially on their networks, he said, and a Chinese ISP is testing it as well. However, the technology has its difficulties, namely how it might be used.

Peer-to-peer file sharing is pretty much code for pirating content, and rights organizations aren’t keen on losing ISPs as an ally in their fight against P2P file-sharing. Another issue is the coming net neutrality debate in the U.S. Lafferty says that ISPs are so focused on fighting these rules that they have little time  to collaborate on solving network congestion problems through technologies such as P4P. There’s also a question as to whether prioritizing P2P files as P4P does would violate future net neutrality principles. However, at a time when network congestion is already a topic of federal debate, getting more information out about ways to relieve it can only be a good thing.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

Living by the Numbers: What Happens When You Quantify Everything? WebWorkerDaily – by Celine Roque "; Wireless Handheld Keyboard and Trackpad for UMPCs jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; The Party Line — Phone Buzz of the Day jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel ";

Posted by Stacey Higginbotham on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  4 Comments
Tags: cmcsa, Comcast, p4p, Verizon, VZ

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past several weeks, you’ve no doubt been bombarded with the heavy marketing surrounding the new Droid smartphone. Today, TheAppleBlog has a good analysis of the first weekend of sales for the Droid — in which 100,000 units moved — compared with the weekend openings of the iPhone, the iPhone 3G, the iPhone 3GS, and the Palm Pre. In short, the Droid did well, but nowhere near the iPhone releases. The numbers are collected in the chart below. Check Stacey’s thoughts from earlier today as well as TheAppleBlog’s analysis here.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

Living by the Numbers: What Happens When You Quantify Everything? WebWorkerDaily – by Celine Roque "; Wireless Handheld Keyboard and Trackpad for UMPCs jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; The Party Line — Phone Buzz of the Day jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel ";

Posted by Sebastian Rupley on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  15 Comments
Tags: Android, droid, Motorola, smartphones, Verizon

The floundering economy hasn’t kept consumers from spending on mobile data, according to the latest quarterly report on the wireless industry from Chetan Sharma, one of our GigaOM Pro analysts. U.S. data service revenues grew 27 percent year-over-year in the third quarter, Sharma reported, with Verizon Wireless and AT&T accounting for 80 percent of the rise, underscoring what I wrote last week about how the rich carriers are getting richer. Given the investment needed to build out new networks, and the incredible growth in data, both the smaller carriers and U.S. regulators should mind the growing gap between those that are raking in the wireless data dough and those that are not.

Verizon’s data revenue exceeded $4 billion during the quarter, and is now approaching longtime global leader NTT DoCoMo.  Overall, the top four U.S. carriers “are now a permanent fixture” among the top 10 worldwide carriers in terms of mobile service revenues. Other nuggets from Sharma’s report include:

• 3G penetration in the U.S. stayed at “a healthy” 43 percent in the third quarter of 2009, with Verizon outpacing its competitors and T-Mobile slowly expanding its 3G coverage. The growth in 3G and smartphones helped offset some of the downward pressure on the data revenues and overall ARPU.

• Flat-rate pricing continued to gain steam in the U.S. market with industry-wide flat-rate pricing plans that included data. Almost all of the major carriers are offering flat-fee access plans for most of the new smartphones being introduced in the market, and roughly 20 percent of the consumers have flat-rate data plans.

• The subscriber gap between the two largest carriers (AT&T and Verizon) and the next-largest two (Sprint and T-Mobile) will continue to increase, Sharma predicts, rising from 28 percent.

U.S. mobile data traffic is likely to exceed 400 petabytes by the end of 2009, according to Sharma, up 193 percent from 2008. And that increased usage is forcing carriers to accelerate their 4G strategies and adopt a multipronged model to manage traffic more effectively. With the larger carriers seeing the greatest revenue gains from data, it stands to reason that as more investment is needed to “keep up with the Verizons” both AT&T and Verizon will continue their data lead. That’s bad news for T-Mobile and Sprint. Sprint’s investment in WiMAX was its attempt to get out in front of this demand for data, but so far it looks like its timing may have been off.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

Living by the Numbers: What Happens When You Quantify Everything? WebWorkerDaily – by Celine Roque "; Wireless Handheld Keyboard and Trackpad for UMPCs jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; The Party Line — Phone Buzz of the Day jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel ";

Posted by Colin Gibbs on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  2 Comments
Tags: AT&T, Chetan Sharma, S, Sprint, T, T-Mobile, Verizon, VZ

Yesterday I called my dad on my cell phone (neither of us have landlines) to tell him about something his granddaughter did, and a few minutes into the conversation he asked if I were near my computer. If I was, couldn’t we Skype instead? In my home Skype is both the P2P telephony program and a verb for video chat. My dad now prefers to Skype with me rather than talk on the phone, a tipping point of sorts in the way we communicate. He said he grew up watching cartoons where folks like the Jetsons talked via videophone, and since the possibility is here today he wants to use it.

In this multimodal communications world, the phone companies, which still rely on voice for both wired and about a quarter of their wireless revenue, should be worried. Voice revenue isn’t growing in the U.S., but that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t if carriers got a bit more creative. So far, data is helping phone companies that have wireless networks as well as those that are providing Ethernet backhaul for anticipated growth in data.

However, the real focus at carriers should be about getting beyond merely providing the pipe in this multimodal world. Check out what BT is doing with its Ribbit acquisition, as an example.

Skype CEO Josh Silverman would certainly be thrilled to hear about my dad’s preferred form of communication, as would the Telepresence folks at Cisco hoping to get the same thing happening in the business world. Silverman told Om in September:

“We are pretty big on video calling,” Silverman told me. The company is putting a lot of resources into building a better video conferencing experience, he said, because he believes that person-to-person video calling is going to be as big as video. That absolutely makes sense because today the definition of communication is constantly changing. In the past, the world was all about voice, then instant messages and now video calling. People are sending messages and status updates via Twitter and Facebook. The communications are now multimodal.

Perhaps in the not-too-distant future my phone calls with be less about voice and more about video, voice, link sharing, and even media sharing all within the context of a television or PC screen. I can turn parts of it on or off as needed. It’s like the vision for social TV that Liz outlined back on March (subscription required) rather than the Jetsons-style videophone that my dad is so excited about right now. The carriers are implementing on this social vision for television, but they should be thinking about adding this to voice as well.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

Living by the Numbers: What Happens When You Quantify Everything? WebWorkerDaily – by Celine Roque "; Wireless Handheld Keyboard and Trackpad for UMPCs jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; The Party Line — Phone Buzz of the Day jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel ";

Posted by Stacey Higginbotham on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  7 Comments
Tags: Cisco, FiOS, skype, Verizon

Verizon has been all over the Android news this week, with two of the hottest phones finally arriving on the scene. The Motorola Droid, a stylish phone almost as thin as the iPhone but with a sliding QWERTY keyboard, debuted Friday. Early reviews are not finding the keyboard to be much of a bonus, but it’s amazing to find one at all in a thin handset. Verizon is also offering the HTC Droid Eris for just $99 with a contract. It’s shipping with the HTC Sense interface on top of the stock Android UI, making it the cheapest phone thus equipped.

Some Droid phone reviewers have taken note of the Verizon Channel in the Android Market. This channel offers apps that have met Verizon’s approval before offering them to customers. T-Mobile announced its own channel for the Android Market this week. Both channels allow customers to buy apps and have them charged to the phone bill, eliminating the need for a credit card transaction.

Meanwhile, two recently announced e-book readers could have more than the Android OS in common. Spring Design this week sued Barnes & Noble over the Nook reader, claiming it has features the bookseller gleaned from information Spring Design shared with B&N under NDA. It has requested an injunction to prevent the Nook from being sold.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

Living by the Numbers: What Happens When You Quantify Everything? WebWorkerDaily – by Celine Roque "; Wireless Handheld Keyboard and Trackpad for UMPCs jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; The Party Line — Phone Buzz of the Day jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel ";

Posted by James Kendrick on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  5 Comments
Tags: Android, B&N, droid, Eris, Spring Design, T-Mobile, Verizon, Verizon Channel

A large group of carriers and equipment makers yesterday came out in support of a standard called One Voice to provide voice over the next-generation Long Term Evolution mobile networks. For those adopting the standard, LTE mobile calls would become VoIP calls. The standard is necessary to ensure you can call people on 3G networks from a 4G network and across different providers, and reduces the complexity of making that happen. 4G networks are all IP-based, while voice calls are still routed over circuit-switched networks, which could cause communication problems. Figuring out how to deliver circuit-switched calls on a packet network was going to result in compromises and costs I detailed back in April.

So enter AT&T, Orange, Telefonica, TeliaSonera, Verizon, Vodafone, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, Nokia, Samsung Electronics, and Sony Ericsson, which are all stepping behind the One Voice effort that will use a standard version of the IMS framework to route voice calls between the IP and circuit-switched networks. It’s easy to understand why the equipment makers are behind this — they’ve been trying to sell IMS gear for years, and because most of the carriers involved have their own IP-based wireless network they’ve already got their own IMS equipment.

However, a few notable players are missing from the One Voice effort, such as T-Mobile and some of the Chinese carriers. There is also still the question of when these standards will actually be implemented and, thus, able to be deployed in the network. Verizon plans to have its LTE network covering 100 million people by the end of next year, and AT&T will start trials at that time as well. Given that yesterday’s announcement was the beginning of a process that could take a year or longer to cement, we’re still going to need an interim solution if carriers want to provide voice on LTE networks.

This standard shows that voice over LTE is finally a big issue for carriers, said Steven Shaw, VP of marketing for Kineto, which is part of a competing LTE voice effort called VoLGA. He denied that One Voice obviates the need for VoLGA given how long it will take for a standard to be ratified and implemented. Carriers can use VoLGA in the meantime, he notes, which would generate revenue for Kineto. Regardless, getting big industry players to get a standards effort rolling is a key step for those who want 4G handsets — even if they won’t be out in 2011.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

Living by the Numbers: What Happens When You Quantify Everything? WebWorkerDaily – by Celine Roque "; Wireless Handheld Keyboard and Trackpad for UMPCs jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; The Party Line — Phone Buzz of the Day jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel ";

Posted by Stacey Higginbotham on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  6 Comments
Tags: Alcatel-Lucent, AT&T, Ericsson, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks, Orange, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Sony Ericsson, Telefonica, TeliaSonera, Verizon, Vodafone

Amid the slew of exciting, new phone announcements (the HTC Hero turned Droid Eris!!!) Verizon Wireless said it would offer prepaid data plans, something we’ve been saying the industry should do for a while. The company is offering folks the chance to pick up data on an as-needed basis, instead of having to buy it as part of a monthly contract. That’s mighty fine of them, and should net the carrier some extra dollars, especially since the convenience charge for the prepaid data is pretty darn high.

But if there’s no expiration date on how long people can use the data, even at a huge markup, these plans might help get people hooked on mobile broadband by allowing them to start using data without an expensive monthly commitment. However, folks will need to purchase a $130 USB modem in order to access the cell network. I’m waiting to hear from Verizon to see if the data expires or if the daily, weekly and monthly titles are mere suggestions of how much someone should use in that time period. The plans are as follows:

• Daily – $15 for 75 MB (20 cents a MB)
• Weekly – $30 for 250 MB (12 cents a MB)
• Monthly – $50 for 500 MB (10 cents a MB)

For comparison’s sake, I pay $60 a month for 5GB or 1.2 cents per MB, although the 250MB plan Verizon offered for $40 on contract seems like a loser when compared with getting the same amount for $30 on prepaid. My guess is these things expire.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

Living by the Numbers: What Happens When You Quantify Everything? WebWorkerDaily – by Celine Roque "; Wireless Handheld Keyboard and Trackpad for UMPCs jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; The Party Line — Phone Buzz of the Day jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel ";

Posted by Stacey Higginbotham on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  5 Comments
Tags: Verizon, VZ

In the time-honored tradition of dealing with competition by suing the pants off someone for an inaccurate ad, AT&T today filed suit against Verizon  for its “There’s a Map for That” advertising campaign. The AT&T complaint alleges that the Verizon ads use misleading maps that show wide areas of the country where AT&T doesn’t have 3G coverage, and implies that in those areas AT&T has no coverage at all. The two companies had been back and forth since Oct. 7 on the ads, with Verizon apparently tweaking them a bit, and adding some fine print, but AT&T isn’t satisfied. So it wants them taken off the air and Verizon to pay for any losses incurred by AT&T as a result of the ad being successful.

Telecommunications and cable history is filled with such lawsuits, with AT&T filing a false advertising claim against Verizon earlier this year to stop Verizon from calling itself “America’s Most Reliable 3G Network” and “America’s Best 3G Network” and “America’s Most Reliable Wireless Network.” Verizon actually took that to court to force AT&T to prove it wrong. Verizon has not only been the recipient of such lawsuits but also the instigator, when last year it sued Time Warner Cable for its ads that implied Verizon’s FiOS service was akin to satellite TV. What’s so sad about these lawsuits is it shows how much advertising can sway public perception of a product, and for many, how hard it is to distinguish among providers.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

Living by the Numbers: What Happens When You Quantify Everything? WebWorkerDaily – by Celine Roque "; Wireless Handheld Keyboard and Trackpad for UMPCs jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; The Party Line — Phone Buzz of the Day jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel ";

Posted by Stacey Higginbotham on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  26 Comments
Tags: AT&T, T, Verizon, VZ

Verizon, with the launch of the Droid phone, is being either incredibly confident or amazingly arrogant about its network performance (I suppose it could also just think that the Droid phone won’t be a data-consuming blockbuster hit). Yesterday, Telephony Online quoted a Verizon regional data sales director as saying that it wasn’t planning any network overhaul to keep up with the Droid, that in fact Verizon welcomed the data deluge.

“We’re encouraging it,” said Arvin Singh, VZW director of data sales for the Illinois-Wisconsin region. “We’re anticipating the Droid will be a blockbuster, but we’re not adding any new backhaul or new EV-DO carriers for the launch. We’re not anticipating the network will take a hit on this.”

 

The comment story does a great job of highlighting the differences between AT&T’s and Verizon’s network, and underscores AT&T’s network problems that it experienced after folks began using their iPhones as Steve Jobs undoubtedly intended. With its “What me? Add backhaul?” attitude, Verizon clearly hopes that over time the experience using the Droid vs. the iPhone will also highlight the differences in the two carriers’ networks equally as well.

Twitter This Article   Facebook This Article   Email This Article

Living by the Numbers: What Happens When You Quantify Everything? WebWorkerDaily – by Celine Roque "; Wireless Handheld Keyboard and Trackpad for UMPCs jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; 5 Energy Storage Players That Won Smart Grid Stimulus Funds Earth2Tech – by Katie Fehrenbacher "; The Party Line — Phone Buzz of the Day jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel ";

Posted by Stacey Higginbotham on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  5 Comments
Tags: AT&T, T, Verizon, VZ